The Sound of Thunder
by Raziel12
Summary: A Silence of the Lambs themed AU. Agent Oerba Yun Fang needs to catch a killer, and the only way to do it is to consult one of the world's most infamous serial killers - Lightning Farron.


**Chapter One: Opening Gambit**

Dr Jihl Nabaat walked with Fang all the way to the door. "One last thing, agent. Remember everything we talked about. Do not share any personal information with her. Captain Farron is not like any of the other prisoners we keep here. Believe me, you do not want her in your head."

"Understood." Fang nodded as the guard unlocked the door. A long corridor stretched out before her, lit with fluorescent lights. "Thank you for letting me speak with her, doctor."

"Don't thank me just yet. I've agreed to let you see her. No one, and I mean no one, can force her to speak with you." Jihl turned on her heel. "Good luck, agent. And don't let her get to you. She's in the last cell at the end of the corridor."

Fang started the walk down the corridor. The guard shut the door behind her and locked it. The lights above her flickered, but it was impossible to ignore all the catcalls and yelling. The people in the cells on either side of her were more like animals than people. One of them thumped into the bars of his cell and clawed at the leg of her pants.

"Where do you think you're going, beautiful?" He bared his teeth and spit flew from his mouth. "You get back here!"

She pulled her leg free and continued on to the end of the corridor. There, at the end of the corridor, in the last cell, was the person she'd come to see – behind titanium bars and several layers of reinforced glass.

"Captain Farron?" Fang winced at how timid she sounded. She might have been a newly minted agent, but she was still an agent of the most powerful law-enforcement agency in the world. She had years of training and plenty of experience in the field. She was ready for anything. She had to be. "Are you awake, ma'am? The warden should have told you that I'd be coming."

The woman lying down on the bed sat up and turned to look at her. Fang jerked back and nearly stumbled into the wall. There was nothing – absolutely nothing – in those cold, blue eyes. She might as well have been staring at a doll, an inhumanly pretty doll.

Then those eyes darkened and filled with mocking amusement. The flickering light from the corridor vanished into those blue depths and turned them almost black. Those full lips curved up ever so slightly.

"So, you're the agent they sent. How interesting." The words were spoken in just the right pitch to send a shiver down Fang's spine. Even though the voice was slightly rough from disuse, there was no denying the smooth, silky sound of it. "Tell me, agent, do you often make a habit of doing stupid things to try and prove yourself?"

"Excuse me?" Fang straightened. This woman couldn't be that dangerous, not with all those bars and glass between them. "What are you talking about?"

"I thought it would be obvious." Farron stood with all the grace of a born dancer. She took three swift steps and then stopped just shy of the glass. A stray lock of pink hair slipped down to cover one of those remarkable eyes. "Your shoes agent – they're scuffed, old. Senior agents don't wear shoes like that when they come to visit people like me." She tapped the glass with one finger and ran it across the glass as though she wanted to stroke Fang's cheek. "And there are your clothes. Your pants suit is practical – cheap but well made. You expect to be on the frontline, but a senior agent is never on the front line. A senior agent always dresses to impress, to show off their position. If I had to guess, I'd say that you're new to this. That would explain why your sleeves are as long as they are – take an inch off your jacket sleeves, agent, or you'll find they catch on the holster when you draw your gun."

"You have an eye for detail, captain." Fang fought the urge to check her clothes and shoes. She hadn't even realised that her shoes were scuffed, and as much as she hated to admit it, Farron might be right about her sleeves. "Now –"

"I'm not finished yet, agent." Farron went back to her bed and lay down on it, closing her eyes and folding her arms behind her head. "You don't wear scented deodorant because you know it might give you away in the field. The human nose is, after all, a wonderfully sensitive thing. Still, you do smell nice, agent. Tell me, do you spend a lot of time in your garden? I think I smell flowers, although I can't quite place which ones." She waved one hand in dismissal. "We're done here. Go back to Amodar and tell him to come himself if he wants to talk to me."

"Wait!" Fang growled and stepped toward the glass. "Don't turn your back on me!"

That got a reaction. In a flash of movement, Farron was pressed up against the glass, her eyes burning into Fang's. "Or what, agent? You should know that I cut open the last person who said something like that to me. He was one of the orderlies here. I started just below his belly button and worked my way up from there. He took a very, very long time to die. He screamed, you know, and I painted the walls red with his blood."

"You don't scare me."

"Then you are a fool." Farron chuckled and slunk back toward the bed. "But you know that you're a fool, don't you? You just don't care." She smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in that smile. "And I am getting bored. All right, tell me what Amodar wants. I might be willing to help you – for a price."

"What price?"

"I want your name." Farron bared her teeth. "I want your name so that when I get out of here, I can whisper it into your ear while I feel your last breath leave your lips. That's what I want, agent, that and to see the light in your eyes grow dim, knowing that I am the last thing you will ever see."

Fang shivered. There was no trace of doubt in those words. Farron's cell was one of the most secure cells in the world, but the woman meant every word. She wished she hadn't been forced to turn her gun in at the counter. But she needed information, and Farron was perhaps the only one who could give it to her. "My name is Fang… Oerba Yun Fang."

"A Yun?" Farron laughed so hard she shook. She even had the audacity to fake wiping a tear from one eye. But as quickly as the laughter had come, it stopped. Farron's lips curled. "They sent a Yun to question me? They truly have gone mad, or have they forgotten what I did to the Yun?"

"They haven't forgotten a thing." Fang snarled. "I haven't forgotten a thing."

Captain Farron had first distinguished herself by single-handedly wiping out a cell of Yun separatists. At the time, the military had ignored her… eccentricities. Who cared if she'd slaughtered the terrorists, leaving the battle site bathed in blood and gore? What mattered was that she'd dealt with them.

And then she'd started going after civilians.

"Good. You would be a complete fool if you forgot what I'm capable of. I wonder how much it must hurt you to come to me for help?" Farron raised one hand to her chin. "You know that they call me Lightning, but if I'm going to help you, we're going to have to get to know each other better. Call me Claire."

"Claire." Fang had to force the words out. "Director Amodar has a case that he believes you can help us with."

"A case? Really?" Farron was so still she could almost have been a statue if her mouth wasn't moving. "What help does he think I can provide?"

"You have several qualifications that might be useful." Fang pursed her lips. "The director recommended that –"

"I don't care what the director thinks. I want to know what you think, Fang." Claire tilted her head to one side. "The director must have chosen you to come here for a reason. I'm not the sort of person to fall for a pretty face."

"Fine." Fang folded her arms over her chest. "I think he's asking me because you're one of the best we had. You were his protégé, Claire, the leader of the unit he put together to hunt monsters like you. And you are a monster – you killed more than two dozen people, and I don't think you gave a damn about them. But I do think you understand serial killers better than almost anyone in the world. That's why he's willing to ask you, to put up with your crap."

Claire clapped. Her lips curved into a sneer. "I don't appreciate the vulgarity – crap, such a pedestrian word. But I do appreciate the passion although you still haven't given me the answer I'm looking for. What is it about this specific case that has forced Amodar to turn to me?"

"Here." Fang reached into her bag for the file. "Here is the case file." She glanced around. "How…?"

"Over there." Claire nodded at a slot in the glass. It was similar to the one used to return a library book after hours. "Put it in there, Fang. Let me have a look at it."

Fang passed the file through the slot and waited as Claire flicked through it. Her eyes shimmered, and her lips lifted into a faint smile. Fang recoiled. She'd read the file. She knew what kind of horrors it contained. And Claire was pleased by it? Of course she was. She was a monster, just like the person they were trying to catch.

Finally, Claire spoke, setting the file down on her bed. "It would seem that I have an admirer."

"That's one way to put it." Fang leaned back against the wall of the corridor. "We've found ten bodies already. Someone is trying to outdo you, captain." They'd found ten bodies across five murder sites – always one older sister and one younger sister.

Claire lifted one of the photographs up and held it to the glass. "Do you see this, Fang? Look at how their hands and legs are tied. They wouldn't have been able to move."

"Why does that matter?" Fang asked.

"Because their throats were cut, but not too much. They would have lasted at least a few minutes, and from the way they are positioned, they would have been able to watch each other die." Claire's eyes softened. "Imagine it, Fang, the two sisters watching each other die, watching the light fade from each other's eyes, and knowing that there was nothing they could do."

"You're sick."

"And you're not thinking the way you should be." Claire smiled and waved the photograph back and forth. "Whoever is doing this is more than an admirer – I believe they think almost the same way I do."

"You say almost."

"Please, I know the police never released all the details of my crimes. The type of knot used on those ties is exactly the same as the one I used. But there are a few differences." Claire put the photograph aside and held up another to the glass. "But the staging is different. Remember, I always placed them at the table. I always made them eat dinner first before I tied them to their chairs. But the ones here are tied up on the ground facing each other. And look, the wounds are much worse on one of the women, I believe the older sister. See the marks on her hands and arms? She was untied at one point, and she tried to defend herself. They were angry with the older sister, the person who did this, they wanted to make her pay."

Fang swallowed thickly. "Right…" She flipped through another copy of the files. "Wait… there were wounds on the feet too…"

"Very good, Fang." Claire smiled and held up a different photograph. "The wounds are on the soles of her feet and on her Achilles tendon."

"They didn't want her to run away," Fang said softly. "Whoever did this, they didn't want her to leave. But… but why treat the older sister this way? You never did."

"But you forget, Fang, that I am the older sister. And my sister never ran away from me. I made sure of that."

Fang hissed. "You put your little sister in the hospital. You would have killed her if Amodar hadn't caught you."

"Oh, please." Claire waved one hand. "I would never hurt Serah. But tell me, how is my little sister?"

"She fine, and she's somewhere you'll never find her." It had taken Serah Farron six months to get out of the hospital after which she'd disappeared into the witness protection program. "Monster."

"To return to the matter at hand, then. What do you think about those wounds?"

"Abandonment issues. The suspect might even have a younger sister of their own. It would explain the brutality and the difference in how they treated the victims."

"Very good, Fang." Lightning gave her a mocking smile. "But there's more. Look at the other wounds on the older sister, the ones on her chest, the ones that didn't kill her even though there were so many of them."

Fang grabbed the autopsy reports and more photographs. She had to juggle them in her arms. She should have asked for them to give her a table. The older sister in each case had suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest and stomach, but the wounds hadn't been fatal. More to the point the angle of the wounds suggested…

"A woman," Fang whispered. "It's probably a woman that's doing this. Most of these older sisters are about your height, but whoever is killing them is a few inches shorter than they are – there aren't many men who fit that description." She gasped, scrabbling through the file. "And to stab them so many times without killing them – they must have medical knowledge, a doctor maybe, or a nurse. And… and…" She found the page she was looking for. "Here! The coroner said the knife used in each of the killings was something unusual, possibly military!"

"Well done, Fang. I can see why Amodar sent you." Claire sat down on her bed. "Go tell Amodar what you've found out. I've helped you enough for today."

"Wait!" Fang stomped toward the glass. "I know you know more. I can tell."

"I've helped you enough," Claire said. "You should be able to make a start with what I've given you, but I have a feeling you'll be back." She reached out with one hand, as if to cup Fang's cheek. "Yes, I think we'll be getting to know each other very well."

And then Claire was just gone. There was no other way of putting it. She closed her eyes, and nothing Fang said or did could rouse her. Slowly, she turned away and walked to the end of the corridor. The screams and yells of the other prisoners rang out, but she barely heard them. The guard opened the door, and just as he was about to lock it again, a single voice rang out, cutting through the din as the other prisoners fell silent.

"Give your sister my regards, Fang," Claire shouted. "The Dia necklace you're wearing looks very nice."

Fang took one last look down the corridor and then got out of the facility as fast as she could. The first thing when she got out was to call her sister. Despite the fact that Claire was locked in her cell, she was more relieved than she could say when Vanille answered her phone.

X X X

**Author's Notes**

As always, I neither own Final Fantasy, nor am I making any money off of this.

This is based on Fangrai Forever Prompt #313: A Silence of the Lambs themed AU. Agent Oerba Yun Fang needs to catch a killer, and the only way to do it is to consult one of the world's most infamous serial killers - Lightning Farron. There's more to the prompt, but I've cut it here because of possible spoilers (due to the prompt).

I have a confession to make – I was the one who submitted this prompt. And since no one has decided to fill it, I thought I'd give it a go. I don't think I have to say too much here. Lightning is the serial killer, and Fang is the agent. It's a game of wits between the two of them, but Lightning might have a trick or two up her sleeve. After all, Lightning isn't the sort of person to start a game just for fun. She plays to win.

I also write original fiction. If you like my fanfiction, I'm sure you'll love my original stuff too. You can find links to it in my profile. If you like fantasy, give _The Last Huntress_ _Series_ a try. I've also recently released my first novel-length, original story, _Durendal_.

Also, today Sunday 27th April (Pacific Standard Time), _The Last Huntress_ will be available for free on Amazon. If you've ever thought about giving my original fiction a try, today is the day! Check it out! You can find a link to it at the top of my profile.

As always, I appreciate feedback. Reviews and comments are welcome.


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